Chapter 4 - THE ARCHIVE OF LIES
The west wing office of Marcus Vale had remained untouched for seven years.
The double doors were solid mahogany, reinforced with steel plates, and secured by an old-fashioned six-digit mechanical dial—a lock that only Marcus and his personal secretary had ever known the combination to.
Dominic stood before the vault door, his hands resting on his hips, staring at the brass dial.
“I tried three hundred combinations over four years,” Victor murmured, watching the dark hallway behind them with his gun raised. “Your father took the combination to his grave, Boss.”
Mara stepped forward, pulling a small brass stethoscope from her canvas bag.
“He didn't take it to his grave,” Mara said, pressing the diaphragm against the cold steel plate near the dial. “He left it in the rhythm of his favorite aria.”
Dominic raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Marcus Vale played Puccini’s Tosca every night at nine o’clock,” Mara explained, her ear pressed to the receiver as her left hand slowly rotated the brass knob.
Click.
“The three movement measures from Act Two,” she whispered.
Click. Click.
“Fourteen... thirty-two... zero-nine.”
CLACK-CLUNK.
The heavy internal locking bars retracted with a deep, echoing metallic boom that sounded like a vault door opening in a bank.
Mara pushed the heavy mahogany doors open.
Inside, the office was preserved in a layer of fine, grey dust.
The air was thick with the smell of old paper, aged leather, and stale tobacco. A massive executive desk carved from dark walnut sat at the far end, positioned beneath a towering portrait of Marcus Vale in his prime—a harsh-faced man with cold gray eyes and an unyielding jaw.
Dominic walked into the room, his shoes leaving clear footprints in the dust on the Persian rug.
He stopped in front of the desk, his gaze fixed on his father’s portrait.
“All my life,” Dominic said quietly, “he told me that loyalty was the only currency that mattered. He beat it into my head that a Vale never betrays his own blood.”
Mara walked up to the side of the desk, pulling a small silver lever hidden beneath the bottom drawer.
A secret compartment popped open with a soft hiss.
Inside lay three thick, leather-bound journals, a stack of offshore bank ledgers, and a small velvet box containing a pair of silver cufflinks stamped with the initial D.
Dominic reached down and picked up the velvet box. He flipped it open.
Inside lay two tiny lockets. One contained a lock of dark hair labeled Dominic. The other contained an identical lock labeled Daniel.
“He didn't hate Daniel,” Mara said softly, watching Dominic’s face. “He was terrified of him. Daniel was born with your father’s genius, but without his patience. When Daniel was twelve, he tried to set fire to the Vermont estate to escape. Marcus realized Daniel couldn't be controlled, so he locked him away in a private military academy in Ukraine under a false name.”
“Ukraine?” Dominic turned his head sharply. “The Voronin Syndicate’s training facility in Odesa?”
“Yes,” Mara said grimly. “Your father paid the Voronins two million dollars a year to keep Daniel in an iron cage. But three years ago, when your father died, the payments stopped.”
Dominic closed the velvet box with a hard snap.
The pieces of the puzzle were fitting together with terrifying, bloody clarity. The sudden influx of eastern European mercenaries into the city, the silent territorial encroachments on his shipping docks, the disappearance of minor funds from his accounts—it wasn't a rival mob family trying to start a turf war.
It was his twin brother, trained by the most ruthless syndicate in Eastern Europe, coming home to collect twenty-seven years of unpaid interest.
The glass doors leading to the balcony suddenly shattered.
A tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a tactical turtleneck and a dark leather coat stepped through the curtain of falling glass, holding a heavy-caliber revolver in his gloved right hand.
The amber light from the hallway caught the side of his face.
Dominic stared at the intruder.
It was like looking into a twisted, scarred mirror.
May you like
The man had the same dark hair, the same sharp nose, the same gray eyes, and the same tall frame. But across his left cheek ran a jagged white scar, and his eyes burned with an insane, cold fury that Dominic had never seen in any human being before.
“Hello, little brother,” Daniel Elias Vale said, his voice a deep, gravelly rasp that sounded like gravel grinding under a heavy boot. “You’re sitting in my chair.”
